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From: tdrinkar@cosmos.acs.calpoly.edu (Terrell Drinkard)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Text editing on Macs
Message-ID: <1989Oct25.174042.25428@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 25 Oct 89 17:40:42 GMT
References: <2385@eagle.wesleyan.edu> <1989Oct23.081251.21268@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <2713@eagle.wesleyan.edu>
Sender: news@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (News Guru)
Reply-To: tdrinkar@cosmos.acs.calpoly.edu.UUCP (Terrell Drinkard)
Organization: Cal Poly State University -- San Luis Obispo
Lines: 45

In article <2713@eagle.wesleyan.edu> rstepno@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:
>In article <1989Oct23.081251.21268@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>, tdrinkar@cosmos.acs.calpoly.edu (Terrell Drinkard) writes:
>> In article <2385@eagle.wesleyan.edu> rstepno@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:
>>>I'm looking for a plain-text editor for newspaper reporters to use
>>>on dual-floppy Mac SEs...
>> Bob, have you considered getting an old version of MacWrite and
>> have it save files in text only format?
>
>We've considered MacWrite and MS Write, but as far as I know there's no way to
>set them up to always save files as ASCII text for a computer-searchable
>archive of published articles. (The alternative here seems to be a
>file conversion program to translate any files accidentally saved in WRITE
>or whatever format to ASCII. Any of those around?)
>

Yes, there are indeed MacWrite to text translators around.  I
FTP'ed one (from sumex I think) and it works fine.  It's even a DA!
What more could you ask for?

>Two things I should have mentioned the last time:
>1) We'd like to be able to have at least a couple of files open
>   at a time (notes, outline, article, memo, letter to Mom...)
>2) Our dual-floppy SEs are PhoneNETted together. The network software,
>   printer drivers, InterMail and DISKTOP eat up a lot of system
>   disspace.
>
If you need a couple of files open simultaneously, then the old
MacWrite is out.  If I remember correctly (and it has been a couple
of years) it would only support one document open at a time.
 
Granted that I'm a little biased in this area, but Word has done
well for me.  Multiple documents and text format saving and opens
MacWrite documents with no effort.  Not the 4.0, but the 3.02
version.  Word does have oodles of options, but you can set it for
short menu's and not get most of them.  And you don't need them for
plain old writing anyway.
 
Good luck!
 
Terry

Disclaimer et la Signaturo:
Hell no, I'm not responsible for what I say!  If everyone were
responsible for what they said, we'd have had a balanced budget in
1984.